STRATEGIES TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS GROW

You've placed your ads, you've started to register your students and now comes the moment that you have been waiting for: Your own teaching business has actually gotten off of the ground.

You have a place to teach, you have students to teach and everything is as exciting as can be. Still, as the weeks and months go by you realize that being in business actually involves a lot more skills than teaching lessons.

You have to learn to manage your income and expenses so that at the end of each month you are showing a profit after all your bills are paid. Perhaps you have expanded your teaching business into a full time one or expanded your full time teaching business into a new private school.

Either way, you have become a teacher / administrator or perhaps only an administrator as your time gets taken up more and more with other responsibilities aside from giving lessons.

My Business Strategies Report discusses many ways you can effectively expand your new or existing teaching business and add new revenue streams to your lesson programs.

Almost everyone teaches one on one, but not everyone realizes the vast income potential of group classes because they feel they lack sufficient space to carry on such classes. My report shows you how to make use of outside locations to give your group classes, even where you will never be charged rent to do so.

If your students require books or other materials to study with you, I discuss in great detail how you too can profit from these necessary purchases by being your own store/boutique or making substantial commissions off of referral business.

You have to stop thinking of your students as wanting to take traditional lesson programs and my report shows you many of the exciting and sometimes off beat programs my students paid hundreds of dollars extra for in addition to their weekly lesson programs.

Who said studying with you couldn't be fun?

I discuss my teaching staff and how to deal with various issues related to administrating such staff. I also show you a four year overview of my private school expenses and where the money went with a percentage breakdown as to what went to rent, advertising, salaries, taxes, upkeep, etc.

Why wait until you are already paying these expenses to learn what you are going to have to deal with.

Remember, there is a reason why over 90% of new businesses fail in the first few years. Here are ten of them:

Home Office / Jeff Wuorio
Taken from http://www.bcentral.com/articles/wuorio/150.asp

Undercapitalization. Money's not only the root of all evil; it may well be the leading cause of small-business failures. Far too many small-business owners underestimate how much money they're going to need, not merely to get the business up and running, but also to sustain it as it struggles to gain a commercial foothold. Norman Scarborough, an associate professor of business administration at Presbyterian College in South Carolina, says, "Once you start out undercapitalized, that can start a downward spiral from which you can never catch up."

Bad cash flow. This is the macabre cousin to inadequate capital. Even businesses that move past the embryonic stage often collapse when incoming cash doesn't at least offset expenses and other costs. Watch your "burn rate" (a buzzword coined by dot-com firms, which somehow reveled in how much available cash they were torching). As Scarborough puts it: "When it comes down to it, cash is what really counts."

Inadequate planning. Not surprisingly, this is the reason problems like capitalization and bad cash flow happen in the first place. It's critical that you map out as comprehensive a business plan as possible, covering financial issues, marketing, growth and an array of other elements. (For more on business plans, see these articles.) Granted, it can be time consuming, as a well-prepared plan can take weeks or months to complete. "But that's the time to find out an idea may not work," says Scarborough. "If you don't plan and still go ahead, you may end up with heartache and thousands of dollars down the drain."

A competitive edge. Genuinely unique ideas are as rare as honest CEOs these days, but it's still critical that your business gain a toehold in some sort of singular niche that you can exploit. Be it a slightly different product or customer support that goes beyond your competitors; earmark that one element that sets your business apart. "Too many small businesses are simply 'me too' operations," says Scarborough. "Make sure something is unique or different."

Mushy marketing. Your mother knows you're special, but what about your prospective customers? It's essential to develop a marketing strategy not merely to identify who might buy from you, but why. Make certain your marketing strategy sets you apart so a customer can clearly see why she'd rather go to you than a competitor.

Inadequate flexibility. From stacks of cash to battalions of seasoned employees, every small-business owner knows the advantages a larger competitor brings to the game. Well, one thing he can't necessarily do is turn on a dime, something small businesses can exploit. Never forget to remain flexible. If a product isn't quite right or a marketing campaign isn't really flying, don't be afraid to tinker. Making those sorts of in-course adjustments is much more unwieldy for the big guys.

Ignoring the next step. Recently, I wrote about a hardware store owner who practically imploded when a clerk volunteered to trim a bolt for me (see this story). To be blunt, that's the sort of cavalier disdain you might expect at a larger operation. Don't let it happen at yours. Make sure you and your people emphasize complete customer support, from doing things you don't have to to offering thoughtful, useful advice that goes beyond the ordinary.

Forgetting there's no red 'S' on your chest. Entrepreneurs are a smart, resourceful bunch, but running a small business carries its share of hidden kryptonite. Don't try to be all things to your business. If you cringe at the thought of maintaining complete books, don't hesitate to hook up with a good bookkeeper. When a legal issue crops up, don't rely on your home-baked juris doctorate to evaluate the legal ramification. Establish a long-term relationship with an attorney; preferably one with small-business acumen.

Great boss, mediocre staff. The hardware store incident mentioned earlier underscores how a solid business with a knowledgeable, enthusiastic owner can often be brought down by inexperienced and unmotivated employees. Make certain your employees are well-trained, fairly compensated and somehow share in the fire that burns in your belly.

Uncontrolled growth. Ironic as it seems, but a small business that simply succeeds too quickly often pushes itself into an early grave. If your production fails to keep pace with demand or necessary expansion coincides with insufficient cash, the growth you dream about as an entrepreneur can actually threaten your business' very existence. Again, cover foreseeable growth in your original plan and track it adequately to make certain that it never gets dangerously out of hand.

Home Office / Jeff Wuorio
Taken from http://www.bcentral.com/articles/wuorio/150.asp

My business report will help you deal with many of these issues and from the perspective of a teacher and private school owner.